Crawling Out From Under My Fears

It’s been a while. It’s been about two months, actually. We all know what’s been happening in the world in the past two months, so there’s no need to go over all that here. Suffice it to say, I’ve been struggling since the election to find a way out from under some pretty crushing fears for my future. It’s taken me this long to give up my fears and put myself in God’s hands again. I have to keep doing that, over and over and over again, as new things happen in the world. I have to re-learn, again and again, that my troubles don’t really amount to much, in the grand scheme of things. If I were gone, my family would still continue. It’s taken me a lot of praying, and a lot of scriptures, to remind myself that I have no need to fear; all will be well, no matter how it goes. This mortal life is but a blink of an eye, here and gone again, and my immortal soul has more important things to worry about, like how I treat my fellow man. So, I’m crawling out from under my fears, and putting them behind me. No matter what happens, I have put my trust in God, who I know wants me to be happy, and who has a long-range perspective that I can’t begin to comprehend.

It’s a new year, though, full of hope and possibility! Who knows what could happen! For instance, I found my thermal underwear this morning, which is lovely because it’s been below freezing here lately, and we don’t really know how to cope with that here in Texas. Here, when it drops below 70 degrees, folks turn on their heaters!

And I have plans for this year, things I want to do. Most of them center on making my room a lovely, organized place, which it has never been before. I took one first step in doing that today, when I put away all my clean laundry that had been sitting for months. That, in itself, has made a change in the atmosphere of my room! There are countless more little things I can do around my room to make it look nicer, that if I simply take a moment and DO them, they’ll stop lurking at me in the background and I’ll feel like I accomplished something. The biggest hurdle I have is simply allowing myself to only do one or two small tasks in a day, rather than requiring a huge, all-or-nothing push that would wear me out. It’s difficult, stopping after a mere few tasks, especially when I still have enough energy to do a little more. The danger for me doing a little more is that I’ll overdo it without realizing it, and pay for it for days afterward.

As for my writing, this year I’ll be revising my completed story (working title “The Healing Touch”) and will be on the lookout for feedback from beta readers. I’ve sent it out to a few alpha readers already, but only one sent back any feedback. Still, in my cold read of what I had written, I spotted a lot of things I need to change. I definitely need a different title, though.